Justice and the Social Contract

Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

Samuel Freeman

Justice and the Social Contract

Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

Samuel Freeman

Description

John Rawls (1921-2002) was one of the 20th century's most important philosophers and continues to be among the most widely discussed of contemporary thinkers. His work, particularly A Theory of Justice, is integral to discussions of social and international justice, democracy, liberalism, welfare economics, and constitutional law, in departments of philosophy, politics, economics, law, public policy, and others.

Samuel Freeman is one of Rawls's foremost interpreters. This volume contains nine of his essays on Rawls and Rawlsian justice, two of which are previously unpublished. Freeman places Rawls within historical context in the social contract tradition, addresses criticisms of his positions, and discusses the implications of his views on issues of
distributive justice, liberalism and democracy, international justice, and other subjects. This collection will be useful to the wide range of scholars interested in Rawls and theories of justice.

Justice and the Social Contract

Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

Samuel Freeman

Table of Contents

Introduction Part One: A Theory of JusticeChapter One: Reason and Agreement in Social Contract ViewsChapter Two: Utilitarian, Deontology, and the Priority of RightChapter Three: Consequentialist, Publicity, Stability, and Property-Owning DemocracyChapter Four: Rawls and Luck EgalitarianismChapter Five: Congruence and the Good JusticePart Two: Political LiberalismChapter Six: Political Liberalism and the Possibility of a Just Democratic ConstitutionChapter Seven: Public Reason and Political JustificationPart Three: The Law of PeoplesChapter Eight: The Law of Peoples, Social Cooperation, Human Rights, and Distributive JusticeChapter Nine: Distributed Justice and the Law of PeoplesAppendices Appendix A: Remarks on John Rawls, Memorial Service, Sanders Theater, Harvard University, February 27, 2003Appendix B: John Rawls: Friend and Teacher (Obituary from The Chronical Review: The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 13, 2002)

Justice and the Social Contract

Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

Samuel Freeman

Author Information

Samuel Freeman is Goldstone Term Professor of Philosophy and Law, University of Pennsylvania. He edited both John Rawls's Collected Papers (1999) and his Essays in the History of Political Philosophy (2007).

Justice and the Social Contract

Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

Samuel Freeman

Reviews and Awards

"Highly recommended."--D.H. Rice, CHOICE

"Freeman seems to have read almost all of the classical philosophical sources on which Rawls drew, to have assimilated large stretches of contemporary and secondary literature, and to have thought deeply about every sentence Rawls ever wrote.... The result is an extraordinarily substantial set of papers...this is a very valuable book."--Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"Freeman is the leading authority on the thought and writing of John Rawls, and Rawls was the leading political and social philosopher of the twentieth century. Freeman's clear, careful, and deeply informed studies in these essays offer important insight about basic questions of interpretation and justification--about Rawls's contractualism, about his relation to utilitarianism, about the idea of public reason, and about his reasons for limiting his principles of distributive justice to the self-contained nation-state."--Thomas Nagel, New York University

"Freeman is one of the leading political philosophers of his generation. His influential papers include some of the most sophisticated and illuminating discussions of themes from Rawls's earlier and later work. This important collection will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in political philosophy." --R. Jay Wallace, University of California at Berkeley